Harvard Lunch Club Political Podcast

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club podcast for December 13, 2016 it’s the Bikini Burger Babes edition of the podcast brought to you by SimpliSafe, DonorsTrust and Patriot Mobile. Today we will talk about Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants and the mind behind the Hardees advertising campaign that puts fat, juicy hamburgers in the hands and mouths of scantily-clad, blue-hot, All American girls (see image). Why does the left view gorgeous women in bikinis as outrageous but Lena Dunham in a bikini as “empowering?” And who, by the way, really believes that raising the minimum wage is a smart idea that will help, for example, unemployed people? Andy Puzder doesn’t! We’ll also discuss Pizzagate: is the Comet Ping Pong Restaurant in Washington D.C. really involved in an international child sex ring with the complicity of major Democratic figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton? Seems unlikely…and we advise against going to “self-investigate.” Let the authorities handle it, okay? Finally, Harry Zieve Cohen writes in this week’s edition of American Interest that Donald Trump can use his infrastructure plan to build a powerful political machine while not simply flushing a trillion dollars down a rat hole. We will discuss. As always, we will have our shower thoughts and our hidden gem for this week comes to you from Pearl Jam: Wishlist. The HLC podcast is also brought to you by SimpliSafe: Protect your home the smart way without the expensive long-term contracts using Simply Safe home security. Visit Simply Safe-dot-com-slash-RICOCHET. That’s spelled S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E dot com slash Ricochet. And the HLC podcast is also brought to you by Donors Trust: It’s nearly the end of the year, that time when almost one third of all charitable giving occurs. Do you want to make sure your charitable giving gets done easily AND in alignment with your values? Check out donorstrust.org/ricochet and find out how. and last but not least, we are brought to you by Patriot Mobile: Would you switch phone companies if you knew that your current carrier was using your money to fund George Soros’ allies, restrict your Second Amendment rights or promote abortions through organizations like Planned Parenthood? With Patriot Mobile there is a conservative alternative.    

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Political podcast for December 6, 2016, it’s the Trump’s Taiwan On Strategy edition of the podcast, brought to you by Stamps.com, SimpliSafe and DonorsTrust. Today we discuss – Trumps phone call diplomacy with Taiwan. The Taiwanese government is no doubt in ecstasy that after forty years of one China policy – where the one China was someone other than them – that the new President-elect was either cunning enough or bumbling enough to get himself on the phone with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. We share some secret insight that we have from a Taiwanese diplomat acquaintance who shall remain nameless. Then, Kelloggs dives into a bowl of politics and goes Snap Crackle Pop as (a) they suspend their advertising from Breitbart.com and (b) Breitbart strikes back. As of this writing Kelloggs (NSYE: K) is down about 4% in the last five trading days (against a rising market). And we’ll talk about Madonna Doing the Trump Depression Dance. The rock star and pop tycoon is interviewed in Billboard Magazine this week and shares her mourning emote over the results of the election. It is not quite just another vacuum tube pop star whining however and the M-ster has a few intelligent things to say. We will discuss. We will, as always, have our shower thoughts and this week our hidden gem is Ian Tyson’s country/folk classic Someday Soon as sung by Suzy Bogguss. The Harvard Lunch Club podcast is brought to you by stamps.com: Anything you can do at the post office you can now do right from your desk with stamps.com. Anything except, of course, wasting your precious time. Buy and print official U.S. postage for ANY letter or package using your own computer and printer. The HLC podcast is also brought to you by SimpliSafe: Protect your home the smart way without the expensive long-term contracts using Simply Safe home security. Visit Simply Safe-dot-com-slash-RICOCHET. That’s spelled S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E dot com slash Ricochet.” And the HLC podcast is also brought to you by Donors Trust: It’s nearly the end of the year, that time when almost one third of all charitable giving occurs. Do you want to make sure your charitable giving gets done easily AND in alignment with your values? Check out donorstrust.org/ricochet and find out how.  

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club for November 28, 2016 it’s the Trump Killed Fidel edition of the show! Trump stuns the world winning the big election and just like that Fidel exits stage left to his eternal reward. Coincidence? We think not. We discuss how finally Fidel’s place in history is well-urned. Yuk, yuk. Should the Cuban government have kept their glorious leader in corporum eternus in the manner of Castro’s inspiration and guide V.I. Lenin (who continues to greet tourists to this day in his subterranean mausoleum)? Might an embalmed Fidel have come in handy as the greeting face at the future Havana Disney World’s Yesterday Exhibit? We’ll discuss. And, why do liberals continue to whine and moan in utter hysteria over Trump and what can we do to get them to keep it up forever? Todd tells the story of a colleague who forwards all manner of diatribe to him – including a hilarious piece by Milo Yiannopoulos entitled Here’s Why There Ought to Be a Cap on Women Studying Science and Maths, the humor of which appears to have eluded said colleague. We’ll talk about Milo’s argument and the perspective of Nobel Prize Winner Tim Hunt regarding which Mike giving his informed scientific opinion. Finally, Democrat Congressman Tim Ryan is challenging Nancy Pelosi and political orthodoxy that identity politics is all and everything to the left. What is identity politics anyway? Is our strength to be found in diversity or in unity? What is the value of diversity to the right? What is the value of unity to the left? We will have, per usual, our shower thoughts; and our hidden gem this week is the classic tune Somewhere Beyond the Sea, as rendered by the talented (and beautiful) Miranda Wren Stopa. The Harvard Lunch Club podcast is brought to you by stamps.com: Anything you can do at the post office you can now do right from your desk with stamps.com. Anything except, of course, wasting your precious time. Buy and print official U.S. postage for ANY letter or package using your own computer and printer. by ZipRecruiter: Is your business giving you endless headaches because you can’t seem to find the qualified candidates who are right for the jobs you have to offer? With ziprecruiter, find candidates in any city or industry, nationwide. Just post once and watch your qualified candidates roll in to ziprecruiter’s easy to use interface. and last but not least, we are brought to you by Patriot Mobile: Would you switch phone companies if you knew that your current carrier was using your money to fund George Soros’ allies, restrict your Second Amendment rights or promote abortions through organizations like Planned Parenthood? With Patriot Mobile there is a conservative alternative.

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Podcast for November 22, 2016, It’s the Trump Party edition of the program, brought to you by SimpliSafe as well as Donors Trust. This week on the podcast we discuss the conflict of interest landmines awaiting Team Trump described recently by Republican Commentator David Frum. How will it be possible for President Trump to avoid getting in trouble when legislation, executive orders and rolling out of bed will have consequences for his personal financial empire? For the Democrats (and Republicans) who will be scheming to get rid of him as soon as possible won’t this be a target rich environment? Then we’ll talk about Vice-President Elect Mike Pence’s trip to the theater with his daughter to see the big, Tony-award winning hit Hamilton and the booing and dissing that he endured just to acquire a little culture with his kid (other than that Mr. Pence, how did you enjoy the play?). Was that an unbelievable ego trip by the Hamilton cast and crew members or what?!? Finally, we’ll discuss an article by bustle.com writer Julie Alvin entitled: 21 Women Whose Dads Voted For Donald Trump Tell Their Fathers How It Made Them Feel. How does this make Mike feel??? That’s Mike with three college attending daughters who are not completely with the Trump program. You can find the Harvard Lunch Club at http://harvardlunchclub.com/ and on Facebook at Harvard-Lunch-Club-Political-Podcast, find us on iTunes (a 5 star rating, please!!!) or anyplace else that you get your podcasts. We are on Twitter: @HLCpodcast and, of course, we are on Ricochet.com! The HLC podcast is brought to you by SimpliSafe: Protect your home the smart way without the expensive long-term contracts using Simply Safe home security. Visit Simply Safe-dot-com-slash-RICOCHET. That’s spelled S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E dot com slash Ricochet.” And the HLC podcast is also brought to you by Donors Trust: It’s nearly the end of the year, that time when almost one third of all charitable giving occurs. Do you want to make sure your charitable giving gets done easily AND in alignment with your values? Check out donorstrust.org/ricochet and find out how.  

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club podcast for November 15, 2016 it’s the Primal Scream edition of the podcast with your hosts, radio host Todd Feinburg and nanophysicist Mike Stopa. After six days we are all still screaming! Some scream for Donald Trump, some scream at Donald Trump and some scream, unaccountably, for ice cream. This week on the podcast we will talk about more fallout from the election – from the enthusiastic protests of professional troublemakers and precious snowflakes to the promises, promises of Lena Durham and fellow travelers to leave the United States (don’t let the door hit you on the way out!); from the new odd couple in the White House – of course I am talking about Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon – to the nation’s courageous mayors who are reaffirming their commitment to stand in the schoolhouse doors and prevent the enforcement of Federal Law. We’ll talk about marches by the KKK that aren’t and Mike’s plan to use the purse strings of scientific research to force universities to ensure that their janitors and gardeners are all legal U.S. residents. We’ll have, as usual, our fascinating shower thoughts and, as a tribute to the late, great Leonard Cohen we’ll have as our hidden gem of the week one of his early greats, Bird on a Wire. So come and scream with us! You can find the Harvard Lunch Club at http://harvardlunchclub.com/ and on Facebook at Harvard-Lunch-Club-Political-Podcast, find us on iTunes (a 5 star rating, please!!!) or  anyplace else that you get your podcasts. We are on Twitter: @HLCpodcast and, of course, we are on Ricochet.com! The Harvard Lunch Club podcast is brought to you by stamps.com: Anything you can do at the post office you can now do right from your desk with stamps.com. Anything except, of course, wasting your precious time. Buy and print official U.S. postage for ANY letter or package using your own computer and printer. And the HLC podcast is also brought to you by Donors Trust: It’s nearly the end of the year, that time when almost one third of all charitable giving occurs. Do you want to make sure your charitable giving gets done easily AND in alignment with your values? Check out donorstrust.org/ricochet and find out how. And last but not least, we are brought to you by Patriot Mobile: Would you switch phone companies if you knew that your current carrier was using your money to fund George Soros’ allies, restrict your Second Amendment rights or promote abortions through organizations like Planned Parenthood? With Patriot Mobile there is a conservative alternative.  

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club podcast for November 9, 2016 it’s the “Trump is a Genius” edition of the podcast. We’ll discuss the new reality of November 9, 2016. We’ve been wondering what this day was going to be like for *ever*. And it turns out to be better than we could possibly have imagined it! Not only did Trump win, but the sheer energy of the victory carried along almost all of his detractors on the right – at least temporarily – like a tsunami…a temporary tsunami? We will discuss the change in the electorate that brought this about. Are the blue collar, Reagan Democrat, rust belt “leftover” voters a permanent feature of the new Republican coalition? Are Democrats in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – what Michael Moore called the “Brexit states,” destined to be a vanishing breed just as Democrats in the South have vanished? Mike will make a valiant attempt at humor with the prospective differences between the Trump presidency and the Obama presidency. (It’s hilarious). And then we will discuss wither the Clintons now? Will Hill and Bill finally get divorced leaving Bill to sow his molding wild oats around the globe? We discuss! Then we’ll have our shower thoughts as usual and our hidden gem this week is “It Don’t Worry Me,” from Robert Altman’s Nashville, as performed by Barbara Harris. Check us out on Twitter @HLCpodcast, on facebook at www.facebook.com/Harvard-Lunch-Club-Political-Podcast. And please go to iTunes and give us a big, fat, wet five stars! The HLC podcast is brought to you by a bevy of wonderful sponsors. By Stamps.com: Anything you can do at the post office you can now do right from your desk with stamps.com. Anything except, of course, wasting your precious time. Buy and print official U.S. postage for ANY letter or package using your own computer and printer. By ZipRecruiter: Is your business giving you endless headaches because you can’t seem to find the qualified candidates who are right for the jobs you have to offer? With ziprecruiter, find candidates in any city or industry, nationwide. Just post once and watch your qualified candidates roll in to ziprecruiter’s easy to use interface. And by SimpliSafe: Protect your home the smart way without the expensive long-term contracts using Simply Safe home security. Visit Simply Safe-dot-com-slash-RICOCHET. That’s spelled S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E dot com slash Ricochet.”      

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Political podcast for November 1, 2016 it’s the Conrad Black’s Life Matters edition. Our special guest is Lord Conrad Black founder of The National Post, author of highly acclaimed biographies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and Canadian TV personality. Lord Black is an outspoken Trump supporter who writes for the National Review. He will discuss with us, among other things, what makes America the greatest country on earth and how the “Bush-Clinton-Obama co-regency” threatens to derail that greatness. Further, as a personal acquaintance and longtime business associate of Donald Trump he attests to Trump’s solidity as a businessman and loyalty as a friend (to say nothing of his basic sanity). Also, we’ll talk about FBI Director James Comey’s leap back into the middle of the 2016 election and the torpedo he launched at the HMS Hillary last Friday by reopening her email investigation. Does Hillary’s first instinct of demanding that Comey release everything immediately make sense? Is her second instinct – to assassinate the messenger by slamming Comey – work any better? Is the enthusiasm gap, where Trump now leads by seven points according to one poll, enough to tilt the election to Donald? We’ll have our shower thoughts as usual and our hidden gem this week is (the subversive) Clandestino, by Manu Chao. The HLC podcast is brought to you this week by Stamps.com! Anything you can do at the post office you can now do right from your desk with stamps.com. Anything except, of course, wasting your precious time. Buy and print official U.S. postage for ANY letter or package using your own computer and printer. And we are also brought to you by SaneBox. Is your email box out of control? Of course it is! It’s an email box. Well if you had SaneBox like we do you would be back in the world of inbox sanity. Sanebox sorts through your email and moves all the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see.

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Political Podcast for October 25, 2016, it’s the “Trump is Dead” edition. Your hosts Todd Feinburg, Boston area talk show guy and Mike Stopa, practicing nanophysicist will guide you again through this week’s obstacle course of an election and preview what’s going to happen if we wake up on November 9 to President-elect Hillary Clinton (as we seem painfully likely to do). We will not spare you the pain: Obamacare cast in cement, pathway to citizenship, oppressive taxation (“she’ll go where the money is”) – are on the horizon. What do we do? And we’ll also discuss the drip, drip, drip of the Wikileaks email dumps. If we haven’t heard the crescendo yet, what can we expect to come next? We discuss the revelation of some supposedly distinguished journalists cravenly calling themselves “hacks” and running their copy by John Podesta, the DNC or any other leftwing outfit that gives them succor and access. (Hint: we name names…but that’s what Wikileaks is all about, isn’t it?). We’ll have our shower thoughts as usual and our hidden gem this week is Senza una Donna, by the Italian superstar Zucchero. (For you folkies out there, sorry, he *does not* play the banjo). The HLC podcast is brought to you this week by Stamps.com! Anything you can do at the post office you can now do right from your desk with stamps.com. Anything except, of course, wasting your precious time. Buy and print official U.S. postage for ANY letter or package using your own computer and printer. And we’re also brought to you by ZipRecruiter! Is your business giving you endless headaches because you can’t seem to find the qualified candidates who are right for the jobs you have to offer? With Ziprecruiter, find candidates in any city or industry, nationwide. Just post once and watch your qualified candidates roll in to Ziprecruiter’s easy to use interface. And last but not least, HLC comes to you courtesy of HelloFresh! HelloFresh is the meal kit delivery service that makes cooking fun, easy, and convenient! For $35 off your first week of deliveries, visit hellofresh.com and enter [HARVARD] (that’s us!) when you subscribe! Follow us online at harvardlunchclub.com and on twitter @hlcpodcast. The Harvard Lunch Club Podcast is part of the Ricochet family of podcasts. Visit ricochet.com.

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club podcast for October 18, 2016 it’s the Rigged Podcast edition of the show. We are thrilled to have the chance this week to talk matters philosophical and transcendent (and Supreme Court) during our exclusive interview with Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine and the Slate Political Gabfest who joins us again at HLC. The Trump Train continues to clatter down the tracks and the days of rigorous speeches and focused message in late August and early September that brought the race to parity seems to be a thing of the past. Trump continues to draw tens of thousands but The Donald’s focus seems to be on polls and process. We discuss this and we also discuss a powerful piece by Hoover Institution historian and overall conservative big cheese Victor Davis Hanson – in The National Review no less – arguing the case for conservatives to vote for Trump. (We thought that was a no-brainer long ago). We’ll have our shower thoughts and our hidden gem for this week is Buster Poindexter’s cover of Castle in Spain from Disney’s Babes in Toyland. This edition of the HLC podcast is brought to you by SaneBox. If your inbox is out of control (and who’s isn’t) try the SaneBox solution. Go to Sanebox.com and enter the promo code HLC (that’s us) and get an extra $25 off on top of the two week free trial. We are also brought to you by ZipRecruiter.com. Is your business just not finding the qualified candidates you need to succeed? At ZipRecruiter.com post you advertisement just once and watch qualified candidates roll in. Follow us online at Harvardlunchclub.com, on twitter @hlcpodcast and at Richocet.com. And now, if you like the podcast you can buy Todd and Mike a cup of coffee by hitting our new “donate – buy us coffee” button for a fixed $2 donation. We thank you.

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Podcast for Tuesday, October 11,  2016. It’s the “Hillie Sutton: Go Where the Money Is” edition. We come to you in the wake of the second presidential debate in which Donald Trump is viewed by many as having calmed the outrage connected to the release Friday of his Crotch Grab interview – which had the media in a feeding frenzy and scared Republicans running away from Donald anew. We’ll talk about the debate, we’ll discuss the Crotch Grab interview released Friday, and we’ll have our exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone. This edition of the podcast is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. If  you’d like to place a free help wanted ad on Ziprecruiter.com as a listener to the HLCpodcast, just go to Ziprecruiter.com/First, that’s Ziprecruiter.com/F.I.R.S.T. Todays’ HLCpodcast is also brought to you by SimpliSafe Home Security. Protect your home without an expensive long term contract with SimpliSafe. Go to SimpliSafe.com/Ricochet – S.I.M.P.L.I. SAFE.com SLASH ricochet. Follow us online at Harvard lunch club.com, on twitter @hlcpodcast.com and at Richocet.com.

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Political Podcast for Tuesday, October 4, 2016. It’s the Hillary Heads Homes edition. We are former congressional candidate and nano-physicist Mike Stopa and radio talk host and newspaper editor Todd Feinburg, and this week we analyze * the disastrous week that Donald Trump has inflicted on his campaign since the debate of last Monday night. * Then we interview John Derbyshire, a longtime conservative writer whose hardline work currently appears at alt-right site VDare.com. We talk to John about the Trump candidacy. He explains why he’s voting for Trump even though he doesn’t necessarily support Trump. We’ll also have our Shower Thoughts, and our Hidden Gem comes from folk-singer Stan Rogers and his song about (what else) a boat called The MaryEllen Carter. This week’s podcast is brought to you by SimpliSafe – Stomping Out Burglary, One Home at a Time.

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club podcast for September 27, 2016! It’s the Trump Rocked it, But the Media Won’t Say It! edition, brought to you by SimplliSafe! The morning after the Thrilla in Hampstead, nanophysicist Mike Stopa and radio talk host Todd Feinburg tell you who won the debate and how. Then we’ll share our prerecorded predictions (just to make ourselves look dumber than usual), followed by our shower thoughts and our Hidden Gem from the band XTC. Protect your home the smart way WITHOUT the expensive long-term contracts using SimpliSafe. Visit SimpliSafe-dot-com-slash-RICOCHET. Go right now and you’ll also get free shipping on your order and a free keychain remote, worth $25. Visit SimpliSafe-dot-com-slash-RICOCHET. To get started. Find us online at harvardlunchclub.com and on twitter @hlcpodcast, and of course on ricochet.com.

Welcome to the HLC podcast for September 20, 2016. It’s the Muslim War on Dumpsters edition. We are nanophysicist Mike Stopa and radio talk host Todd Feinburg. Our topics for today are: 1) The bombings in New York and knife attacks in Minnesota – how did two well-assimilated muslims get radicalized? Were they well-assimilated? And what will the two presidential campaigns do now that the national focus has shifted suddenly back to national security? 2) Hillary’s weird vibe – listen to this audio of Hillary responding to the bombing and tell us this doesn’t sound like she’s in more trouble physically than when she was collapsing on September 11. Has she given up? Is she just mailing it in now? And why, after Monday the 19th, does Hillary not have another event on her calendar until the debates one week later? Is it time, with 50 days until the election, to take six days off to prepare for the un-preparable? 3) The media now judges news stories on the presidential race on Donald Trump as racist or lies or both. This is what they call fact-checking. It is what sensible observers call a full court press to prevent the unthinkable. We’ll have our shower thoughts – and pay homage to “International Talk Like a Pirate Day.” And we’ll have our hidden gem from the 1987 movie Bagdad Cafe entitled “I am Calling You.” You can find us at Harvard Lunch Club Political Podcast on Facebook or on Twitter at @HLCPodcast. Give us a fat five stars on iTunes and we’ll either come to your house for dinner or let you choose the next hidden gem.

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Podcast for September 13, 2016. It’s the (Basket Full of) Deplorables Podcast edition – with nanophycisist Mike Stopa and radio talk host Todd Feinburg. Here are our topics for today: I. Hillary engages in deplorable hate speech, calling half of Trump supporters Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it. Is this a campaign killer? II. We discuss trigger warnings, and reaction to the Universtiy of Chicago War on Triggers. III. Hillary collapsed on September 11, but didn’t hit the ground when she was caught by members of her secret service detail.   Find us online at harvardlunchclub.com, on twitter @HLCpodcast, and at ricochet.com as part of the ricochet family of podcasts. Please go to itunes and give us a nice, juicy, five star review!!!!

It’s the Harvard Lunch Club Podcast for September 6, 2016 – the Hillary’s Immigration Wall edition. We are nanophysicist Mike Stopa and radio talk host Todd Feinburg and this week we are discussing: Note: Rent-seeking is an economics term that means rigging things so that you get benefits from the economy without contributing productivity to the economy.    1) Todd poached some cuts of the New Yorker’s Adam Davidson talking about why Hillary Clinton and her rent-seeker approach to government is gross and why the Clinton Foundation is gross from the Slate Politcal Gabfest and the lads discuss the notion of a rent-seeking economy and whether Davidson is correct that the system is rigged and it’s gross!!!!   2) Hillary’s Immigration Reform plan, designed to create more illegal aliens and give them, along with those already here, more benefits. Stopa thinks she’ll have to get serious eventually, but Todd says she’ll just use the usual compassion talking points.   We’ll have our shower thoughts… And John Coltrane provides our Hidden Gem. Find us online at harvardlunchclub.com or at Ricochet.com.On Twitter we can be found @toddtalk. Please visit our page on iTunes and give us a nice big fat 35 stars!!!!